links - lynx-like alternative character mode WWW browser

links [options] URL

links is a text mode WWW browser, supporting colors, correct table rendering, background downloading, menu driven configuration interface and slim code.

Frames are supported. You can have different file formats associated with external viewers. mailto: and telnet: are supported via external clients.

links can handle local (file://) or remote (http://, ftp:// or https:// if there's compiled-in SSL support) URLs.

Most options can be set in the user interface or config file, so usually you do not need to care about them.

-anonymous

Restrict links so that it can run on an anonymous account. No local file browsing. No downloads. Executing of viewers is allowed, but user can't add or modify entries in association table.

-assume-codepage <codepage>

Use the given codepage when the webpage did not specify its codepage. (default: ISO 8859-1)

-async-dns <0>/<1>

Asynchronous DNS resolver on(1)/off(0). Default is on.

-base-session <number>

Linkses are connecting together, forming sessions by default. Normally, there's only one session with number 0. In this way, you can make him to form more sessions at once. See also -no-connect option.

-download-dir <path>

Default download directory. (default: actual dir)

-download-utime <0>/<1>

Set time of download files on(1)/off(0). Default is off.

-dump

Write a plain-text version of the given HTML document to stdout.

-format-cache-size <num>

Number of formatted document pages cached. (default: 5)

-ftp.anonymous-password <password>

Use this as the password for anonymous ftp sites.

-ftp-proxy <host:port>

Host and port number of the FTP proxy, or blank. (default: blank)

-help

Print a help screen.

-http-bugs.http10 <0>/<1>

Turn use of HTTP/1.0 on(1)/off(0). Default is off.

-http-bugs.allow-blacklist <0>/<1>

Turn blacklist of buggy servers on(1)/off(0). Default is on.

-http-bugs.bug-302-redirect <0>/<1>

Turn broken redirect 302 (violates RFC, but compatible with Netscape) on(1)/off(0). Default is off.

-http-bugs.bug_post-no-keepalive <0>/<1>

Turn no keepalive connection after POST request (for some buggy PHP databases) on(1)/off(0). Default is off.

-http-proxy <host:port>

Host and port number of the HTTP proxy, or blank. (default: blank)

-language <langname>

Language to use in user interface.

-max-connections <max>

Maximum number of concurrent connections. (default: 10)

-max-connections-to-host <max>

Maximum number of concurrent connection to a given host. (default: 2)

-memory-cache-size <Kbytes>

Cache memory in Kilobytes. (default: 1024)

-width <size>

Size of screen in characters, used in combination with -dump. (default: 80)

-no-connect

Runs links as a separate instance - instead of connecting to existing instance. Prevents him to connecting to an existing session. See also -base-session option.

-receive-timeout <sec>

Timeout on receive. (default: 120)

-retries <retry>

Number of retries. (default: 3)

-source

Write the given HTML document in source form to stdout.

-unrestartable-receive-timeout <sec>

Timeout on non restartable connections. (default: 600)

-version

Print the links version number and exit.

You may optionally prefix each of this keys with a number, telling its repeat count (how much times to do it). You can also re-bind those keys, altough this feature is still in the state of testing, so undocumented. The keys you may use for navigation are:

PGDN

page down

Space

page down

PGUP

page up

b

page up

B

page up

CursorDOWN

next link/down

CursorUP

prev link/up

^INS

copy to clipboard

^C

copy to clipboard

INS

scroll up

^P

scroll up

DEL

scroll down

^N

scroll down

[

scroll left

]

scroll right

HOME

home

END

end of page

CursorRIGHT

enter link/press button

ENTER

enter link/press button

CursorLEFT

go back

d

download link

D

download link

/

search in the page

?

search back in the page

n

find next match

N

find next match backwards

f

zoom actual frame

F

zoom actual frame

^R

reload page

g

go to URL

G

go to the current URL

a

add a new bookmark

A

add a new bookmark

s

bookmark manager

S

bookmark manager

q

quit

Q

quit

=

document information

|

header information

\

toggle HTML source/rendered view

*

toggle display of images

TAB

next frame

ESC

menu/escape

F9

menu

F10

file menu

The following keys can be used while editing a line/jumping to a URL:

CursorRIGHT

move right

CursorLEFT

move left

HOME

jump to the beginning

^A

jump to the beginning

END

jump to the end

^E

jump to the end

^INS

copy to clipboard

^B

copy to clipboard

^X

cut to clipboard

^V

paste from clipboard

ENTER

enter line

BACKSPACE

delete back character

^H

delete back character

DEL

delete character

^D

delete character

^U

delete from beginning of the line

^K

delete to the end of the line

^W

auto complete line

links is known to work on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, IRIX, HPUX, Digital Unix, AIX, OS/2 and BeOS. Port for Win32 is in state of beta testing.

Can't connect to some FTP servers (Novell, NT). Connection stays in "Request sent" state.

Frames don't work if there're more frames with same name. Turn them off in such case.

You can't upload large files; it takes _lots_ of memory.

You shouldn't press '^Z' when you are in a viewer

Please report any other bugs you find to Mikulas Patocka <mikulas@artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> or to links mailing list <links-list@linuxfromscratch.org>.

links is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

links was written by Mikulas Patocka <mikulas@artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>. See file AUTHORS in the source tree for a list of people contributing to this project.

The homepage of links can be found at http://links.browser.org/

This manual page was written by Peter Gervai <grin@tolna.net>, using excerpts from a (yet?) unknown links fan for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Contributions from Francis A. Holop. Extended, clarified and made more up-to-date by Petr Baudis <pasky@ji.cz>.

lynx(1), w3m(1), wget(1)